No. 199

Max Cady scratched the small bump behind his left ear. It was itching again. The brochure had said that this wouldn’t be a problem.

He resolved to call the customer hotline in the morning. For now he was content to settle down after a long day, crack open a cold beer, and watch the game.

Before he turned on the TV, however, he checked the small screen that Tracker Inc. had implanted in his wrist. He couldn’t wait to see what his new toy had to tell him.

He thumbed through the main menu screen past options labeled “Health” and “Personal”, selecting the icon for “External”. He pressed “Ok”.

A new background loaded, showing four lines of information.

-Name Drops: 7

-Pop Ups: 13

-Positivity: 57%

-Likeability: 72%

He pressed “Pop Ups” and was rewarded with seven names. He searched the list for “Danielle Bowden” but the most encouraging information he could find was “Dale Trout: 3”.

“Excellent,” Max muttered sarcastically. He’d paid more than he could really afford for the Tracker system, and all it was telling him right now was that his boss had thought about him three times in the last 24 hours, and that, overall, only 57% of the total thoughts that other people had about him that day were positive. It was not what’d he’d been expecting.

Tracker Inc. had burst into the marketplace two years before, offering a revolutionary way for people to keep stats on their lives. The premise was simple. For the trouble of having the reader chip and viewer implanted, the user would be able to keep tabs on several parameters of their own life, as well as have information about any other acquaintances with a Tracker system displayed for them. The basic plan offered four selectable categories for each of the three main data-streams. Customers could then upgrade to contracts with more areas of feedback.

Max exited the underwhelming “External” feed, and selected “Personal”. He saw his four chosen fields for keeping track of his own thoughts.

-Interactions: 3

-Positivity: 33%

-Productivity: 85%

-Pop Ups: 209

He’d thought about somebody else 209 times that day, had been 85% productive during his waking hours so far, and spoken to three people, two of whom were not impressed with him.

He slid his finger across “Pop Ups”. Sure enough, Danielle Bowden topped the list with 51. More depressingly, Dale Trout was a close second with 46.

Max dimmed the viewer, and then put the game on the TV. He didn’t quit make it to the second batter up before he was back in the “External” menu, refreshing compulsively, looking for Danielle‘s name. For a second he wondered if he should be concerned that his name was going to be topping her list of Pop Ups, but continued anyway, telling himself that any mention was a good mention.